Principles of International Relations - Group Assignment - Essay Example

astrophic and irreversible environmental consequences such as decline in global food production, extreme precipitation and destruction of the natural ecosystem and biodiversity. The extreme summer heat waves could lead to adverse health impacts on human beings and increase the prevalence of vector-borne diseases (Luterbacher & Sprinz, 2001). The development of climate change was initially constrained to scientific conferences since scientists established that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were increasing in the 1960s.

The Villach Conference of 1985 organized by United Nations Environmental Program concluded that states should initiate consideration on a global climate change convention thus creating an agenda for policy makers to address climate change (Paterson, 2013). Countries such as Germany and Canada were concerned with the increased depletion of stratospheric ozone layer, pollution of oceans and loss of biodiversity thus forcing scientists to carry out more research that led to discovery of Antarctic ozone hole (Luterbacher & Sprinz, 2001).

The Northern American heat wave of 1988 summer boosted greenhouse warming agenda in Canada and the United States and thus led to the Toronto Conference of June 1988 that called for reduction of the global carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by the year 2005 (Victor, 2011). Countries like Canada and Japan have committed to reducing greenhouse gases emission since global warming is an environmental disaster that has led to natural disasters in countries in the East Asia region (Paterson, 2013).

The Toronto Conference marked the involvement of international actors such as non-governmental actors in environmental and states thus making global warming an international issue. The United Nations Assembly made climate change a common concern for mankind in 1988 while the Noordwijk Conference of 1989 in Netherlands concluded that industrialized nations should maintain their greenhouse gas emissions